


Apparition

by ilookedback



Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Swearing, Mostly just Slice of life, Reader is a ghost, a little bit, brief mention of a violent dream, frankie gets sick, gender neutral reader, oh did I mention?, so i guess it's sort of a, the baby gets sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29881869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilookedback/pseuds/ilookedback
Summary: The baby looks at you when you enter the room—she interrupts herself with a little hiccup and then scrunches up her face in a fresh bout of tears and leans in her dad’s arms, reaching for you. He glances towards you, following her movement instinctively, and he looks right through you and hitches her closer, pressing a worried kiss to her temple.“I know, mija,” he murmurs, “I know you don’t feel good.”They have so many big emotions, the two of them, and it makes you feel twisted up and achy inside, and resentful that their intrusion on your space is more than just material.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Apparition

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [an idea](https://fleetwoodmactshirt.tumblr.com/post/633340931719970816/shahmeran-i-just-adore-the-concept-of-a-romance) fleetwoodmactshirt had for an AU where Frankie falls in love with a ghost. She was kind enough to let me play with the idea in my own way and that's what this fic is.

The baby is sick. You’re in the attic, in the little private space they haven’t intruded on so far, even as they’ve taken over the rest of the house, all loud voices and buzzing electricity in every room. The dad hasn’t bothered climbing up here yet and you’ve taken to thinking of it as Your room in the same way this used to be Your house before he staked his claim on it. The dust doesn’t bother you and the view from the gable window is pretty and expansive, almost but not quite enough to keep things interesting. It’s quiet up here, usually, but today the baby is sick and she’s breaking the silence with loud, wailing, miserable cries, and you can feel her unhappiness and her dad’s anxiety reaching you all the way from the ground floor. It makes you restless and you sigh internally and make your way down to them.

The baby looks at you when you enter the room—she interrupts herself with a little hiccup and then scrunches up her face in a fresh bout of tears and leans in her dad’s arms, reaching for you. He glances towards you, following her movement instinctively, and he looks right through you and hitches her closer, pressing a worried kiss to her temple.

“I know, mija,” he murmurs, “I know you don’t feel good.”

They have so many big emotions, the two of them, and it makes you feel twisted up and achy inside, and resentful that their intrusion on your space is more than just material.

He makes a phone call and turns on the camera feature and you move closer to peer over his shoulder, curious. There’s an older woman on the screen, and he’s asking her advice about the baby, pointing the camera at her sad little face pressed against his chest. You can’t feel the woman but she looks calm and her voice is steady and you feel his anxiety start to wane as he listens to her.

“Okay,” he says after he’s hung up. “Grandma knows best. She says you’re gonna be okay. I just have to keep an eye on your temperature for now.” And then, turning toward the kitchen, “Let’s get you something to drink, huh?”

He talks to her a lot, even though she’s too young to do more than babble back at him. He pretends to understand her responses, or maybe he really can, you think—maybe he can feel her the same way you can, that sense of inquisitiveness or discomfort or amusement that she radiates in any given moment. She feels more abstract than he does, with her big, vague auras of emotion, while sometimes his focus is so intense it’s like you can read his thoughts. Their first week in the house you’d drifted through his room at night and caught him in a nightmare and for a moment you had tasted the cold iron of blood in your mouth and heard an echo of gunfire ringing in your ears. Panicked, you’d knocked a book off its shelf and fled the room as he gasped awake. You’ve ceded the bedroom to him since then, leaving it alone and keeping to the rest of the house.

The baby’s cries quiet to an unhappy whimper as he takes her into the kitchen, and you venture back up to your calm little attic room and sit in peace again as the household settles back down.

It’s too quiet, the next morning. This man is a military man—you’ve seen the faded sticker on his truck through the window, and the pictures of him in uniform with his fellow troops on display on a shelf in the living room. He sticks to a routine most days with military precision, up at dawn and playing music in the kitchen, singing under his breath while he cooks breakfast and keeps an eye on the baby where she’s sitting patiently in her high chair, or if she’s got too much energy to sit still, where she’s pawing through an open cupboard on the floor, examining the bowls and pans as she tugs them out, until she’s sitting in the middle of a pile of cookware, like a happy little dragon surveying her hoarded treasure.

But sunlight is streaming through the edges of the blinds and the kitchen is cold and still and put away. The baby is starting to fuss in her crib, and you go to visit her. Her eyes widen imploringly and she reaches up, waving her hands through yours. _Hungry_ , she’s thinking. She’s got you wrapped around her finger in more ways than one and you frown in empathy.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’ll go check on your daddy.”

His bedroom door is ajar and you can see him in the middle of the bed, sheets all rumpled around him and the duvet kicked onto the floor. He’s glowing with fever-heat, face twisted in discomfort, and he doesn’t react to the soft babbling coming through the baby monitor on the nightstand by his head. Concentrating, you reach out and turn up the volume so her quiet voice is blaring at him.

He twitches slightly, turning his head on the pillow, but doesn’t wake.

You wonder what he would feel if you tried to slap him. Or how much effort it would take to carry a bucket of water in here and dump it over his head.

His thick hair is curling damp with sweat over his forehead and you smooth it back, resting your hand on his face. His breath hitches and his eyes go tight, squinting. You blow a breath of cool air over him and finally he moves, brushing his own hand over his forehead and blinking awake.

“Shit,” he groans, and then, glancing through you to the alarm clock on the stand, “ _Shit_ ,” he says again. He sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and then closes his eyes, wavering slightly like he’s gone lightheaded. He groans again, wordlessly, and slowly pushes to his feet. You trail behind him, averting your gaze as he uses the bathroom and leaning over his arm to check the readout when he takes his temperature with a thermometer from the medicine cabinet. He frowns in the mirror, looking pathetic and sorry for himself, and then he sighs and grabs the baby thermometer and heads down the hall to the nursery.

She’s squirmy and fussy and there’s a note of despair in his voice as he murmurs to her, trying to keep her still so he can check her temperature. You float overhead and pull a face and she stops to stare wide-eyed at you. The thermometer beeps with a reading and he huffs a breath, relieved. “You’re doing better than I am, babe. No fever.”

He carries her to the changing table and goes through the motions of putting her in a fresh diaper, looking glassy-eyed and a little dazed. She watches him and you can tell she’s picking up on his mood because she finally goes quiet and curious, frowning up at him. Usually he’d be chatting with her by now, telling her about the day ahead and asking what she wants for breakfast as if he’s got a full menu of gourmet options for her to choose from, but today he barely says a word.

“Alright,” he sighs. “We’re skipping pants today.” He snaps her into a onesie and tucks her into the crook of his arm to head downstairs.

You’re not clingy, generally speaking. They do their thing and you do yours and sometimes you float through their spaces or they barge through yours, but you’re not the kind of roommate who feels the need to get involved in other people’s business all the time. Live and let live—or, whatever the case may be. That’s your motto. But something is tugging at you, telling you to stick close, and so you do.

It’s lucky—or something more than luck, maybe, intuition guiding you as it is. His foot misses a step near the bottom of the stairs, and he starts to stumble—his eyes go wide with fear and he reaches his free arm towards the railing—and you throw your weight in front of him, catching him mid-fall and hovering as he straightens up and blinks in confusion and shakes his head, as if to clear it. He swears under his breath and watches his feet the rest of the way down and you see his shoulders loosen in relief when he reaches the ground floor.

It’s typical, you think, that he’s disrupting your plans for the day, such as they are. You don’t keep a strict schedule but if he can have his routines, so can you, even if yours are mostly limited to taking a constitutional around the attic and watching birds out the window. You watch him set the baby in her high chair and wait as he takes longer than he should to select her food from the cupboard, and you exchange a skeptical glance with her as he tries to make a pot of coffee without grinding the beans. You settle into your own spot at the kitchen table, and the baby smiles at you and you smile right back, and you resign yourself to a day of babysitting the two of them.


End file.
